Saturday, February 20, 2010

"Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off." -- J. Conrad

Well. . . yes, and here we go again.

But before we get to The Work, as it were, I want to make sure I know how to cope with this elegant typewriter--(and, yes, it appears that I do)--so why not make this quick list of my life's work and then get the hell out of town on the 11:05 to Denver? Indeed. Why not?

But for just a moment I'd like to say, for the permanent record, that it is a very strange feeling to be a 40-year-old American writer in this century and sitting alone in this huge building on Fifth Avenue in New York at one o'clock in the morning on the night before Christmas Eve, 2000 miles from home, and compiling a table of contents for a book of my own Collected Works in an office with a tall glass door that leads out to a big terrace looking down on The Plaza Fountain.

Very strange.

I feel like I might as well be sitting up here carving the words for my own tombstone. . . and when I finish, the only fitting exit will be right straight off this fucking terrace and into The Fountain, 28 stories below and at least 200 yards out in the air and across Fifth Avenue.

Nobody could follow that act.

Not even me. . . and in fact the only way I can deal with this eerie situation at all is to make a conscious decision that I have already lived and finished the life I planned to live--(13 years longer, in fact)--and everything from now on will be A New Life, a different thing, a gig that ends tonight and starts tomorrow morning. So if I decided to leap for The Fountain when I finish this memo, I want to make one thing perfectly clear--I would genuinely love to make that leap, and if I don't I will always consider it a mistake and a failed opportunity, one of the very few serious mistakes of my First Life that is now ending.

But what the hell? I probably won't do it (for all the wrong reasons), and I'll probably finish this table of contents and go home for Christmas and then have to live for 100 more years with all this goddamn gibberish I'm lashing together.

But, Jesus, it would be a wonderful way to go out. . . and if I do you bastards are going to owe me a king-hell 44-gun salutr (that word is "salute," goddamnit--and I guess I can't work this elegant typewriter as well as I thought I could). . .

I’m relegating my comments to the comment board because, frankly, I think promoting my views on Hunter Thompson on the anniversary of his suicide would be tasteless, distracting, and egotistical (all of which I usually am, but not today). Better to let the author speak for himself. That said, I consider Thompson a personal hero and a role model, not only in his writing, but also in his life. He is known best for his outlandish drug use and bouts of craziness--and rightly so--but slavish adherence to that image of the man does him a disservice. He was much heavier. I recommend everyone read the story of Lisl Auman. It shines a light on a side of Thompson largely ignored during his life, but, I believe, at the heart of his character. He was a fucking champion, and he is still missed.